Gartner survey shows marketers shifting budgets to digital and acquisition

Marketing budgets are tilting harder toward digital media and customer acquisition, and that shift gives SEO and growth agencies a sharper pitch: lower CAC, better efficiency and measurable pipeline. Gartner says awareness and conversion now account for 62.6% of total media spend, while loyalty and retention has fallen 29% since 2024 and now makes up less than 15% of media investment.

The numbers came from Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey, conducted from January through March among 401 CMOs and other marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe. The vast majority worked at companies reporting more than $1 billion in annual revenue. Gartner also said digital media now represents more than two-thirds of total media investments, up 18% since 2024, which makes this look less like a one-quarter swing and more like a two-year reallocation toward channels that can move demand fast.

That backdrop was on display at Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo in Denver, which ran June 8-10, 2026. The bigger signal for agencies is that AI is not replacing labor so much as changing where labor gets spent. Gartner said labor grew to 24.5% of marketing budgets in 2026 from 21.9% in 2025, even as CMOs allocated an average of 15.3% of budgets to AI initiatives. Only 30% reported mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities, and 70% said their internal processes are not mature enough to scale AI effectively. Lack of internal AI expertise was the biggest barrier for 38% of marketing leaders.

For agencies, that is where the real opening sits. If internal teams are buying tools but still lack process, governance and measurement, the winning offer is not just content or rankings. It is implementation that shows how search, analytics and workflow redesign reduce acquisition cost and make AI useful in the day-to-day operating model. Gartner analyst Ewan McIntyre warned that CMOs risk moving faster on AI tools than on the data foundations, processes, governance and talent required to scale them, and that the organizations pulling ahead will be those that pair investment with discipline.

There is also a quality problem underneath the efficiency push. Gartner said 49% of U.S. consumers think generative AI has made content quality worse, rising to 57% among Gen Z and millennials, based on a March 2026 survey of 307 U.S. consumers. Gartner also said 84% of companies are stuck in a brand doom loop that makes it hard to prove brand’s impact on enterprise growth. For agencies selling SEO into bigger budgets, the message is clear: package around proof, not volume, and show how organic search can deliver acquisition efficiency without adding more noise.